PUDDOR'S PROFILE

Says it on the bottom of the OP.

You could probably cut the font sizes down by half here. It takes up a massive amount of space and it really doesn't need to.

You're using Star's HUD, right? Ugh, that's not fun, but since it's more of a placement issue with that HUD than a complete rewrite someone may able to get it operable for you...providing you do make it more visually readable.

For example, MAX values aren't going to be all that important; they're there for HP comparisons while healing, same with MP. Which is why they're smaller in the XII HUD. You've also left barely any room for state display- I'm gonna assume you're going to have cycling icons or text?

Additionally you can key in the HUD's colours here- as FF12 did- in order to allow more battle-visual focus rather than the rather distracting trio of colours. Since your indicators of each are very clear the gauges don't have to be the right colours; that's why the FF12 HUD doesn't use the colours.

I think the main reason FF12 abandoned this HUD is the quickenings system but you may want to look up and research if it was dumped for other reasons; if the HUD was dumped from a technical standpoint replicating it for the sheer fact you're making a fan game and like it doesn't give you enough ground to stand on from a designer's point of view.

These styles don't match at all.

At the moment Deling City is genuinely suffering from bad level design, and it doesn't transition well because of it. There are two maps missing, in essence; the connecting map between the two arches, and the lower parts of the arcade. As a result there are about-face teleports, not to mention some of the locations to the teleports take you to are messed up. There's no way I'm going to leave that as it is.

I'm definitely not a level design pro, but I know I can't just duplicate exactly; it's an impossible task along with being a silly one. It was something I kept in mind and took steps with regarding Winhill; the original map with the item shop got broken up into three maps, which in total are about 70-80 tiles in length. I don't think it feels painfully long, and the maps serve a purpose (there are residencies in both) but weren't present in FF8; I couldn't do it because of perspective, and I wouldn't even bother to try.

That said, I'm going to try to take this to heart as much as I can; there's still plenty of mapping to be done and I don't want to leave the player with a linear experience. I do prefer cosy interiors, but some current maps do cross the line and I would like to remap.

Other points:

I do agree the brush strokes could use some refining in the logo, but I don't believe something very crisp would look right. I made the decision a while back of what I wanted for SLH's logo, and this one pretty much reflects it; it's a design choice for consistency's sake with the original game. My own art does differ in ways from Nomura's, so I'm not going for complete emulation here, just enough to get the vibe right.

Interface...I didn't get a chance to run through the Command menu with others since the remake of the system took place over a few days, so I'm curious as to what made it hard to navigate. The menu wasn't designed for FF8 emulation, it was designed to serve its purpose; you equip your commands and you can see the result of doing so directly via the statistics displayed up the top. In the original menu I found myself going back and forth between Command/Status so I recognized the issue and took steps to alleviate it...

There's no real point in completely emulating instances which aren't relevant anymore. The 'Skills' menu mockup looks nothing like the one in FF8 since you only use it for the purpose of curative spells; it's designed for that purpose, nothing else. Your skills are displayed in the command menu and will most likely be viewable alongside other stats inside the Status menu, so showing the list again would be pointless.

Battles are still very much in refinement stage, but I'll keep that in mind about navigating targets. I have experienced some dissonance there so I would like to fix it and aid battle flow a bit more.

Difficulty isn't final...and I did not have a lot of time to test the boss. The difficulty curve you see here is a result of undertesting rather than deliberate decisions made to make the boss hard. In fact it should have been easy; this level is, as you said, designed to introduce the player to the operation and mechanics of the game.

The boss graphic was actually a very old, pixel traced battler from Cosplay Crisis; which was not animated. This game is. The actual boss for the segment isn't fully designed yet, let alone pixelled, so a placeholder was in order.

I'm going to keep what you've said here in mind, definitely; I too want this to be an enjoyable experience without solely relying on nostalgia and I've said it to my coder several times; we're not going to be able to fly on 'nostalgia' for an entire game, it just doesn't work like that. The gimmick will wear thin and when it does I want there to be a solid, well-written and fun game underneath it. I want to take steps in making my own design choices and thinking about what fits and what doesn't in the overall scheme of the entire game as a whole and not just one demo or one 'disc', and not just in regards to FF8. I don't want this to be a game that lures in players and gives them nothing decent in return, that relies on ancient design and nostalgia gimmicks to keep it afloat.

Thank you for playing and giving fair, honest, and detailed critique; I love critique and know it's one of the most valuable parts of the design process. We've knocked heads a few times in the past, but I think that's mainly because I'm a stubborn goat and got defensive, and in reality I wasn't satisfied 100% with what you were pointing out, either. Which is probably why I got defensive in the first place! I'm bad like that ^^;

This game is ultra tempting to work on but I have OTHER THINGS TO DO ;A;

damn you super alluring planning stages where the game feels awesome and you have 100 million ideas